by Holly Hart
“And just how old are you, Miss –?”
“Mrs. Thorne,” Charlie growls. The sound of his voice thrills me. I shiver. It was protective and caring. God, this man can act. If only it was real.
“Mrs. Thorne, then,” Ms. Winters says with a sour look on her face. “You don’t look much past your eighteenth birthday.”
“Nineteen,” I say. It’s just about the first thing I’ve said since I entered this room that hasn’t been a lie. And a quarter, I don’t bother adding. I have a funny feeling it wouldn’t go down well.
The woman’s eyes dance between me and my fake husband. A look of barely-concealed disdain dances on her cheeks. “Don’t you think that’s a little young to be getting married?” She asks.
I’m of half a mind to slap her. What business is it of hers if I get married at this age? Even if it isn’t real, I mean. Does that matter?
“No, not really,” I reply. “We’ve been in love for long enough. Why wait, I say?”
“What about your daughter, Mr. Thorne. How does –”
Crap. Given that ten minutes ago I didn’t realize my new boss had a daughter, I sure as hell don’t know her name. Can I go to jail for lying to CPS? I don’t know, and the last thing I want is to have to find out.
“Tilly loves Penny,” my new husband says. “I haven’t seen her as happy since her mother died.”
Double crap: he’s really doubled down. I mean, I guess I didn’t leave him any other choice, but still. I should not have done this. Screwed doesn’t even cover it. I mean, where do we go from here? Do I move in with him? Meet his daughter? Sleep with him?
Ms. Winters stands up. The movement breaks me out of my shocked daze. She shuffles her papers and settles them in her handbag.
“I suppose everything is in order,” she says, “for now.”
“I’m glad,” Charlie says. He turns a hundred-watt smile on her. It does nothing to melt the woman’s icy exterior. “And about those complaints: you couldn’t –?”
“I couldn’t,” she confirms. “And Mr. Thorne: it’s not best practice to ask those questions.” That’s the last thing she says before she takes her leave. Both Charlie and I hold our breath until the frosted doors close behind her. The second they do, he recoils from me as though I’m coated in poison.
I don’t know why, but his reaction hurts.
My boss stalks behind his desk, and then sags back into a brown leather executive chair. He reaches forward and stabs a button on the intercom. He doesn’t wait for the person on the other end.
“Ella, organize a meeting with Harper: now.”
Click.
He doesn’t wait for a response. I guess that’s one of the perks of being worth more than most small countries. I feel his gaze on my skin, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. A phrase keeps repeating in my mind.
Charles Thorne. Boss. Husband.
Lover?
93
Penny
Walking in Charlie Thorne’s wake is like following the path of a hurricane: a hurricane with a perfectly toned, beautifully sculpted ass. His gray suit hugs it. Every time he takes a step forward, the soft, thin wool clings to his buttocks.
I need to get my dirty mind off it. I’ve got bigger problems than my libido right now.
He doesn’t say a word. After he spoke to his secretary over the intercom, Charlie closed his eyes, laid back in his seat, and sat like that for a couple of seconds. I opened my mouth, and then I closed it again.
After all, what the heck do you say to your boss when you’ve just married him?
Yeah – I didn’t know either.
We breeze past the lobby.
Miss Casey gives me the stink eye. She knows I’m in trouble; and I can tell she’s desperate to find out why. But in truth, the stern secretary is the least of my problems right now. Mr. Thorne’s pumping out a cold, calm fury. He hasn’t turned it on me yet, but I know he will.
And I’m worried.
“Good Morning, Mr. Thorne; are you heading out?” A man says as we near the elevator. He’s mid-30s, with a pistol on his hip and short-cropped military hair. Ex-special forces; I’d put money on it.
Mr. Thorne just grunts.
“Mind if I come along?”
Out comes another grunt.
We all know that it’s not really a question. Men with Mr. Thorne’s resources don’t just walk around town without protection.
The strange, tense anger radiating from my boss’s body almost crackles in the elevator. The last thing I want is for those doors to ping closed, but they do. So now there are three of us, in a box that sinks forty stories toward the ground in just a few seconds. My stomach falls out from underneath me.
My hand flails out and –
And Charlie Thorne catches it. He holds me tight. Our eyes meet, but neither of us says a word. What can we say? Still, I know what I feel. A tingle runs through me, sparking and crackling. Then he lets go.
It’s gone.
The elevator hits the bottom floor. The doors slide open. The bodyguard steps out and whistles. Another man – same haircut – catches his eye, grabs a set of car keys and spins away.
“Where are we going, boss?” The bodyguard asks. He keeps his voice low and respectful. I can tell that he doesn’t want to poke the bear any more than I do.
Charlie looks up for the first time. His eyebrow dances. “Sorry?”
“Just wondering where we’re headed,” the bodyguard says. “So the chase cars can keep up.”
He meets his boss’s gaze, but I notice that his eyes don’t linger there. They are always moving, always dancing. Looking up, checking sniper spots and suddenly interrogating everyone who walks. There’s no doubting how professional this guy is. If I was worth nine billion dollars, he’s the kind of guy I would want on my side.
Charlie runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, Tony. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Let’s head to Yautcha, okay?”
Yautcha: New York’s hottest Japanese restaurant. I’ve heard of it because everyone’s heard of it. Every day of the week they’ve got celebrities there: Matthew McConaughey; Emma Stone; Meryl Streep; you name it, they’ve been there.
And that’s just Monday.
I’m no restaurant critic, but I know a thing or two. Like, I know you can’t just waltz into Yautcha without a reservation. It’s got a nine-month waiting list; and that’s just to book a table. Except, apparently, you can just waltz in once you’ve got several zeros and three commas behind your name.
“You got it, boss.”
The hurricane resumes walking.
I’ve thought about this moment – well not this precise moment, but close – every day for months. I’ve been working up to getting a job like this all year. I thought about it more than you could possibly imagine. But even so, the reality takes me by surprise. When you’re worth what Charlie Thorne is worth, things just happen.
You need a car? Sure thing – one will turn up outside your New York skyscraper office and take you wherever you want to go.
You need a restaurant reservation? Don’t bother.
You need a woman? Well – apparently you can get a wife just by showing up at work.
We sit in the back seat of Charlie’s limousine. He leans forward, rolls the partition window up, and we’re left in silence. There’s a pause for a couple of seconds. I start to wonder if he’s ever going to mention what I did. Maybe I’ll get away with it.
Yeah, right.
“What the hell were you thinking?” He asks. He’s trembling, bristling with rage. “No – scratch that. Who the hell are you? Why don’t you start with that? What’s your name?”
The limousine’s engine rumbles into life. I hear the signal indicator – click, click – and feel as the limo turns into New York’s lunchtime traffic. My mouth goes dry. I scrape my tongue across my lips. What the hell am I going to do?
“Penny,” I croak. “Penny Walters.”
Charlie Thorne’s gray eyes drill into my
skin. It’s an icy heat – cold, crackling, but no less painful. He breaks me, as I frantically search for an explanation.
His eyebrows kink due to my answer. “Not Penny Thorne? Because – funny story, really – if I’m remembering correctly, you just lied to Child Protective Services and told them you were my wife. What the fuck were you thinking?”
Thinking? That’s the problem; I wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought –”
“That you were helping?” He says with scorn. “Well, that’s obvious. Couldn’t you come up with a believable story, at least?”
Every time my boss speaks, my stupidity gets rammed home. It’s like I’m an anvil, and his dismissive words are the hammer. He rains down blows upon blows.
“I mean, look at you,” he says. “You’re what, eighteen?”
“Nineteen,” I say. Angry heat surges onto my cheeks. I know I’ve screwed up, but he doesn’t need to treat me like this, does he?
Charlie wakes his hand. “Nineteen, then: and you think this is believable? You think CPS is just going to swallow your story hook line and sinker, do you?”
“Well,” I say softly. “You went with it, didn’t you?”
Charlie sighs. He brings his hands to his throat, unlaces his tie and throws it on to the seats opposite. He loosens the top button of his shirt. “Penny, you really didn’t leave me with any other choice.”
The limousine pulls up outside Yautcha after twenty long, agonizing minutes of silence. It quickly becomes apparent that Charlie Thorne doesn’t think of me as an equal. In fact, if he had it his way, I don’t think he would think of me at all.
I don’t know who this guy Harper is, but I guess I’m about to find out.
A white-jacketed maître d’ greets us at the floor to ceiling glass doors. I don’t know how he knew to be there. I guess this is just Charlie’s life.
“Mr. Thorne,” he smiles. “It is such a pleasure to have you join us again. Would you like your usual table?”
For the first time since all this started, I see Charlie crack a genuine smile. “Hey Jimmy,” he says. He brings the man in for a hug. “Good to see you again. Can you put me somewhere quiet instead?”
I look out into the busy restaurant. It’s dark and intimate. Black-jacketed waiters float around – seen but not heard. It’s only just past noon on a Monday, and yet the place is packed. I don’t think Yautcha does quiet. I’m getting ready for the inevitable apology – because that’s what happens in my life – when the exact opposite happens.
“Sure thing, boss,” Jimmy says. “Just give me twenty seconds. Can I get you a drink while you wait?”
Charlie shakes his head.
The wheels spin into motion. In a few seconds, well-heeled diners paying hundreds of bucks a head get asked to stand up, move the different tables, and are given free bottles of wine to calm their plaintive complaints.
We’re sitting down in under two minutes. The table’s laid for three.
“Can I get you anything to eat, Mr. Thorne?” Jimmy asks.
Terrified as I am of the conversation we’re about to have, my stomach rumbles. I’ve never been to a restaurant like this in my life. Hell, a week’s worth of my paycheck at Thorne Enterprises probably wouldn’t cover the entrées. So, I’m kind of hoping that Charlie says yes.
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.
“I’m good, Jimmy; just a bottle of sparkling water.”
Sure. That’s just my luck. I get the one goddamn billionaire in all of New York who isn’t a glutton. I mean, that it seems he’s also the one billionaire in all of New York who isn’t fat, red-nosed and verging on the edge of gout, but still…
I stop thinking about it: about Charlie. It’s not like I’ve got any chance of sleeping with him anyway. I think we’re long past that point.
I cast my eyes longingly around the restaurant. Spicy, Eastern scents waft into my nostrils. I breathe in, deeply. I wouldn’t miss them for the world.
“You’re not hungry, are you?” Mr. Thorne asks. He’s definitely Mr. Thorne when he’s in this kind of mood.
I shake my head. “No,” I reply. “Not hungry,” I lie.
We wait. The sparkling water arrives. We wait some more.
I stare at the perfectly pressed white tablecloth. My heart thuds in my chest. I feel like I’m waiting for Judgment Day. I guess in a way, I kind of am.
I hear the clicking of heels approaching.
Charlie’s chair scrapes back on the sparkling black marble floor. He stands. “Harper,” he says. “Thanks for making it here on such short notice.”
I glance up guiltily. I expect to see Charlie’s lawyer: probably a man in his 60s with a rounding gut, and a two-thousand dollar suit.
That’s… not … what I see.
Instead, I see Charlie Thorne embracing a six foot tall beauty. I glance down to see if she’s wearing heels and a lance of jealousy burns through me when I notice she’s not. Harper’s not just model tall, but a perfect Scandinavian blonde. She’s wearing a restrained blouse, and a close-fitting pencil skirt. In short, she looks like every man’s fantasy.
I pale away in comparison.
“Penny,” Charlie says in a clipped tone. “Meet Harper: Harper Cole, my… fixer.”
Harper, Harper Cole sticks out her hand. “Please, Charlie. I’m your lawyer, not some backstreet mob enforcer,” she says.
They both sit.
“So,” Harper says.
Her eyes twinkle as she pours a small glass of water. The bubbles fizz and pop and I decide that out of everywhere in the world, those seem like the right place to look. Less dangerous, at least, than looking at Harper, Harper Cole, who I’m pretty sure can read me like a book. “What’s the emergency?”
Charlie waits so long before he speaks that I begin to wonder whether he wants me to explain what I did. Luckily, he finally speaks up. As he does I finally summon the courage to look somewhere other than the tablecloth.
“Harper,” he growls. “Meet Penny – my wife.”
That, I think, is the only sentence that could possibly have knocked Harper’s cool, collected confidence. Her face blanches, and her eyes widen. She mops her dark red lips with her napkin, leaving a tiny smear of lipstick on the bright white cotton.
“And I didn’t get an invite to the wedding, Charlie?” She says calmly, barely missing a beat. “After all we’ve been through together, I think I deserve that much, don’t you?”
“That’s the thing, Harper,” Charlie says. “I didn’t get an invite, either.”
Harper leans forward. “Oh,” she says. “Now this is getting interesting. Tell me everything.”
Charlie does. It doesn’t take long. By the time he’s finished, I feel even more stupid than I already do. He lays out my silly excuse for a plan step-by-step, and doesn’t even need to knock it down for me to realize how stupid I was.
Harper’s eyebrows soar like hot air balloons throughout the story. “Well, Charlie. You always bring me the most interesting cases, don’t you?”
Charlie brushes aside Harper’s pale attempt at humor. “What the hell are we going to do, Harper? You assured me that the CPS thing was done. Then this woman turns up my office demanding a meeting out of the blue.”
“Two words for you, Charlie,” Harper says: “Landon Winchester.”
I sit up in my seat. Finally, I understand more than a fraction of the legal jargon the pair of them have been bandying around the last couple of minutes.
Landon Winchester: I know that name. He’s New York’s other leading light. Unlike Charlie Thorne, he craves the spotlight. Unlike Charlie Thorne, he came from money, didn’t make his own fortune. Still, I don’t see what he could possibly have to do with what happened earlier in Charlie’s office.
“Go on,” Charlie growls.
He’s got a dangerous, hard edge to his voice. I shiver. He sounds like exactly the kind of man I thought he was when I took the job. And, though he doesn’t know it, it’s exac
tly the reason I applied.
“Our good friend, Mr. Winchester’s father, was one of the mayor’s biggest donors. Since the old man died, little has changed. In the last election campaign alone, he gave a couple of million dollars. Not all legally, of course. Wired it through half a dozen 501s, but it’s hard to trace.”
Charlie’s face wrinkles with disdain. “Elections,” he spits. “I’ll never understand why people spend so much time and money trying to influence grubby politicians like the mayor.”
“See, Charlie,” Harper says. “Here’s the thing –.”
I get the feeling this is a conversation they have had many times before. Again, a little tinge of jealousy runs down my spine. I know I shouldn’t feel it. I’m nothing to Charlie, and he’s nothing to me. But I envy the relationship he has with his lawyer. They treat each other like equals; it’s plain to see.
“– I know you don’t like paying people off, but when it comes down to it, Landon Winchester has the power to put pressure on the mayor.”
“I don’t want that power,” Charlie says. “I just want to make money and spend it, is that so much to ask?”
Harper rolls her eyes. “Charlie, this is New York, not freaking Rhode Island. This place is like Game of Thrones, you know that. Anything goes; the gloves are off. If Winchester thinks he can mess with your head while this merger’s going on –”
I realize what they’re talking about. I don’t know if it’s true, but Harper definitely thinks that the CPS investigation is politically motivated. Thinking about it, it makes sense. After all, even if he doesn’t have a wife – not before me, anyway – Charlie Thorne can still give Tilly the kind of life that most children could only dream of.
“So what do we do?” Charlie says. He does it irritably, but shoots Harper a look of apology just a couple of seconds later. Trying to get my head around Charlie Thorne is giving me whiplash. Every time I think he’s an asshole, a piece of evidence suggests the opposite is true.
I wish he was an asshole. I want him to be an asshole. It’ll make this so much easier.